Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 171: Voltaic Augury

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Dean Graves ~ https://www.ddeangraves.org/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our guest dreamer Dean Graves from Memphis, Tennessee. I've got to get my list here because my memory is awful. Anyone who's watched the show before knows that. He is a mental health counselor, podcaster, spiritual messenger, and author of four books, including his most recent, The Enigma of Consciousness, A Spiritual Exploration of Humanity's Relationship to Creation.

You can find him at D.deengraves.org, link in the description. description below. We'll get right back to him in two seconds for my part. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends. Always need more viewers for my video game streams, buddy through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. Also, always need more volunteer dreamers. You can reach out to me across multiple social media links in the description, etc., etc. If you'd like to support my work, you may do so by purchasing one of 17 currently available works of historical dream literature. This week, I think I'm focusing on the mystery of dreams, We're going to pop that up over here.

It is the reproduction of a 1600s sermon by a preacher of the gospel in Watford on Hartfordshire. I got that backwards. I can't remember. Talking about how to differentiate divine dreams from delusions of the devil, fascinating historical work, lovingly recreated, reproduced and enhanced by myself, if I may say so. You can also head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.locals.com building a community there. That's probably the best place to get in touch with me. just join up free to join attached to my locals um i think that's enough out of me that's all the shilling if i forgot something so be it uh dean thank you for being here thanks for being patient with my

intro certainly thank you for having me i'm delighted to be part of your show yeah good deal and uh you know just a reminder of the audience too is like you don't have to be a podcaster and shilling a book or or whatever you don't have to be a mental health professional you don't have to you just have to be human and have the capacity to talk to me about your dreams and we can We can make it happen. So I'll talk to anybody. I'm happy to have you. But maybe talk to me about your latest book.

I mean, it's a great place to start. What's it about? It is about consciousness. And it is about as humans, our relationship to creation and the universe. And it is a nonfiction book. It is full of information. of things that I have been taught over the last 14 years. And included in that is the nature of creation, the purpose of creation,

how creation began, how creation is structured. Our role as humans within that structure, which is at a very, elementary stage of the process. It explains higher consciousness, the creator beings. The creation itself is divided into

eight ranges of consciousness. Each consciousness is a fact, each descending consciousness level is a fraction, or a fractal of the level above. and each range of consciousness has a curriculum that as participants in creation we are intended to learn in order to advance to the next level. Everything that we experience is consciousness.

The microphone that you're speaking into, the dreams that you talk about are experiences that we have in order to provide us with opportunities to become more aware and fulfill the curriculum of this range of consciousness. In addition to the experiences that we have on a constant ongoing basis. The book talks that we have an archetypical mind that is a design, it's a blueprint of how we process thoughts, and it's helpful to understand that to understand our relationship to creation because it requires us to create a herophant or a false identity or an ego.

It's all the same thing, just different words for the same thing. And these are how we experience life. And if you understand that we simultaneously coexist in both the metaphysical. world and the physical world. And that relationship I describe as being like being on a sports team. And our metaphysical self is a consciousness pattern that constantly is amended as we have experiences in our incarnational self. But when we are not incarnate, we do like a sports team. We watch videos of our last game, we study what we did right, what we did wrong,

and coach guides us and how to do better than the next game, and then we reincarnate and we try to remember what it is that we're supposed to be doing in this carnation. Then the game is over, and we go back to the locker room, and we learn what we did right, what we did wrong, how we can improve, and so forth. The dreams are just additional experiences. They have all the same elements that the experience that we're having right now are. And understand that dreams are always presented in an environment of some sort. They always have an element of change that we interpret with emotion.

And it always has one potential change. change, which is us that are participating in that. And we are in a condition of being, depending on our degree of awareness. And so consequently, how we respond to dreams is interpreted through the lens that we currently have available to recognize the information that is presented in the dream. The book talks about Christ's consciousness and what Christ's. Christ's consciousness is. It describes how the hierophant that we create work

and is part of our planned curriculum to eventually surrender that herophant and become more of our authentic self. And as we are able to do that, then we experience greater happiness because we inherently are bliss. and bliss is nothing more than the absence of stress, but our resistance to seeing things as they really are, instead of interpreting things through our false lens,

our identity, our herophant, causes us stress. And this stress is the only major distortion that as humans that we experience, and we perpetuate that because of our innocence, or a lack of awareness of the structure. And so the book is designed to hopefully facilitate a new enlightenment period that allows us to transition out of the hegemities that we have created and dominate our world population and move closer into the participation with the folds of the universe itself

and more focus our incarnational efforts towards a common goal. Wow, very cool. Lots of really great ideas in there. Almost too much. Almost too much. But I've been taking a couple of notes. There's too much to do in a podcast. No,

no, for sure. It's a lengthy book, but it's, yeah, and again, it's foundational because I've learned a lot since I've written the book. So I'm working on the fifth book as well.

Yeah, in the process of writing, and getting it out of your head and onto paper, you discover things as you're going you you clarify ideas in trying to figure out how to express them communicate them to other people um one one thing that you touched i mean i got a bunch of notes we'll go back through them uh i've had the same intuition for a long time that we don't just get one go around we we keep coming back because whatever spiritual energy we really are i think of yoda you know luminous beings we are not this crude matter um i love

I love that idea. And it's a very old idea. And some people think, oh, what's an old idea? So we've moved past it. It's like some ideas are eternal. They just need to be understood and remembered and passed on. That's like the biggest thing is, as you were saying, as kind of spiritual revival or enlightenment, I'm hoping to head. I'm hoping also to contribute to that through, through my work is the idea of getting people to rediscover ideas that have been forgotten in this more materialist.

age that we seem to be in. Hopefully we're passing out of that and putting the material in its proper place. It's not like you can live without material in a material world being made of material. Yes, these things are important, but they'd be in the proper context. I mean, the acquisition or experience of the material in some ways is maybe foundational, but it's not the end-all be-all. It's not the final level. Like Maslow's hierarchy, yes, you need food and shelter and all that good stuff, but you're aiming

for self-actualization. you're aiming higher trying to get to that peak of the pyramid through through those levels. So that was my first thought when you're describing this like this is ancient wisdom that people really need to know. And it's good to have books like yours, you know, put them out there. One other note I had was the idea of the fractals of the level above. I love that conceptualization too. He's like, you know, it's like I don't know if you recall the word tessellation like what M.C. Escher did and some of his pattern figures that fit together and then the bigger figure is also

you know it's a fractal if you know what fractals are um you know life living living and the idea that this world is a an illusion created by the limited nature of our physical selves it's like it's um it's looking through um well glass darkly as they say it's like we're only able to see as much as we can see and that's not everything so you know being free from the world and then the goal isn't to get to the end as fast as possible like don't check out now that you're you're missing the point of being here um but when you get to the end and you look back you go whoa that wasn't at all what I thought it was while I was in it um so then there was there was a fractal thing popped in on my head you know it's like if I can express you know experiencing dreams is to life

as experiencing life is to looking back from the afterlife, that next level up, that fractal thing. So we're getting a, in our dreams, we're getting this microcosm of, of a very restricted, limited, focused depiction of, of a specific aspect of life. That if we, it's kind of like adding that depth or as they say, you know, bringing the subconscious up, because, you know, in my estimate, I'm developing my own theory of dreams, which is not entirely new, but I'm trying to bring all the old elements together. So, basically being physical beings is part of my part of my theory everything we experience is in our head somewhere it the the world leaves a physical mark on us as we go through it so everything we've

ever seen heard smelled all the all the all the substance physical experiences we have plus all the ways we thought and felt about it the conceptual level of an emotional level of stuff it's all in there but we can't look at it all at once our visor in the brain is we can only kind of, you know, look around. And during dreams, our conscious mind shuts off. And we get this, this swelling up of, of those forgotten or hidden memories that allow us to go deeper and focus more on a specific thing that's hopefully useful to us. I look at dreams as tools to understand ourselves better and come to, through that understanding, come to better conclusions and better actions in the real world. I'm going on and on now.

But I also wanted to, I'll throw that to you, but also if you could give your definition of hierophants so that people out there who maybe haven't looked up that word before, understand what you mean by it. So I'll shut up for a minute. But it's a false perception of self. And we create this in order to diversify the nature of our experiences. The average human has had over 3,000 incarnations, some as many as 8,000. And the purpose of the incarnations is to explore the nature of an incarnational experience from every possible angle. So we have incarnated multiple times as male. We've incarnated multiple times as female.

Every type of race, we've been the oppressor, we've been the victim, We've been every race possible. Whatever combination of physical world experiences there are, at this point in our evolutionary process, most everyone has enjoyed multiple incarnations from each different angle. And we learn by experiencing. We can read a book, but you don't really know it

until you experience it. And from my own experience, and this is reiterated by others that do the same thing, you can learn it to a certain degree, and then you're called upon, and this occurs in the 12-step programs that are used in recovery. The first part is self-examination, and then you become the teacher. And it's when you become the teacher that you really learn the material, because you have people depending upon you and they're asking you questions that you didn't think of.

And so your exploration of the same material and the same experiences gets deeper and deeper as you diversify your role as both a learner and a teacher. And so that is our purpose is to explore this range of consciousness and deeply and completely is possible. And we do that as an experience. and so we are both the subject and the object of our enterprise through the evolutionary process. Yeah, fascinating. And that's, yeah, so that's one element I wanted to get drilled down on.

And we can, you know, maybe we agree. Maybe we don't. It's fine either way. I have the concept of the universe that there is a God, I'm not explicitly Christian or otherwise, more deist in that nature, like the, you know, the God of nature, whatever made this world. Wouldn't me. Wouldn't any human ever. There's something above.

That's God. But I'm not a young earth creationist in that idea. So not being explicitly Christian, I think, although I believe the Bible has a bunch of really good, tremendous amount of truth and wisdom. I basically conceive it as God said, let there be light. God said, let there be the Big Bang. What do you think creation would look like if a God made it? Boom. everything everywhere all at once um so that's my my concept of that so in that regard it would be uh you know

what was it 350 000 years ago humans went from whatever we were to actually being kind of the modern incarnation of what what it means to be human um and so okay that's one one layer of layer of that aspect from my in my opinion whether we agree or not not happy to hear your comments of course um but also the idea that i i've had to have had this intuitive understanding, I think it's most likely that we, and as you explained it, and I'll explain why, but that we are all in essence, and this is an ancient idea as well, we are all one soul. And the way I describe it is like we are fragments of the soul of God, experiencing itself in the physical world it made to understand itself better. And that we are

these discrete fragments that come back over and over again. But we are, as you said, both we will experience being both the victim and the oppressor, but I think in the same interaction is my understanding of it, anything you do to someone, you do to yourself because you were and are that person when we come back together at the end and you go, oh my God, what did I do? I hurt me. I'm experiencing everything I did to that other person because I was them.

So I think that's that wisdom of that higher plane that we get back, that perspective of like, you know, with this every, every intentional act of misery, we're doing it to ourselves and we're going to experience it. And that's the, it's the hell we create for ourselves on the other side, that regret and pain that we bring back with us

from what we did to ourselves. I think that's everything I was going to say. So I'm going to stop there. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, let me address a contradiction in your terms. Sure, sure.

When you refer to God, that is a religious creation. And every religion, regardless of its teachings beyond this point, is founded on the perception that there is a God and that there is a you. And that in and of itself is false. The one irrefutable truth of creation is all is one, and that is the law of one. Everything else is a distortion of that. And it is through the distortions that we explore ourselves and the creator explores itself. Creation began with the one infinite creator who is outside of creation,

projecting an environment, and within that environment projected an analog projection of itself. And the only distinction between the analog projection and the creator itself as the analog projection was created with the perception of separation. It perceived itself as separate from the One Infinite Creator, and that perception of separation is free will. We perceive free will to be the choice to turn right or to turn left or stand up or sit down or whatever, but that's all the product of the perception of separation,

because if we didn't perceive ourselves as separate, we wouldn't have that choice. And so the layers of consciousness that are the structure of creation and the fractals are increased degrees of intoxication of free will. So each layer, each lowering or descending layer, is more intoxicated with free will. In other words, it perceives itself to be farther away

from the creator than the layer above. The process of evolution, which actually has nothing to do with physicality, the process of evolution is the surrendering of that perception of separation and our integration more completely with unity with the creation, which is where creation ends. And so we are very low on the scale. We perceive ourselves as autonomous being. the next layer of consciousness in order to graduate from that,

we begin to surrender that, and our perception of an individual autonomous organism becomes part of a social memory complex. And the next layer of that is even a larger social memory complex. And we continue that process until we eventually surrender our perception of separation and reunite with the creator. So we take with us all the learning that we, enjoyed along that path.

When we experience something, the creator experiences because we are, we are the one infinite creator experiencing ourselves at this range of consciousness. And there is a specific curriculum that is defined

for us that coincides with our capabilities of perception. And as our perceptions grow, then our happiness grows and our experience of stress decreases and we become more of our authentic self. Yeah, very much so. I'd like that, you know, that you use that word hyrophant and the way you describe it, the false perception of self and as being differentiated in this, what came to my mind,

the vision I got was, you know, the inability of a material being to see what is in front of you and what is behind you at the same time. But eyes facing forward. So our perception of everything is necessarily false because it's limited. And it's not false in a bad or wrong way. It's just false in it doesn't account for everything. You can't see what you. You cannot see what's behind you. Yeah, yeah.

And then if you hold up a mirror, you can see what's behind you. You can't see what's behind the mirror. So we're necessarily going to be limited. And that creates that false perception, the distortion, as you were saying. And that feeds into that, or not feeds in, but also speaks to the idea of this world being illusion. Because it just, it's not, it doesn't account for everything. I don't think I can find a better way to say it. Maybe you can or maybe you already have.

But that's, that's always been, or for a long time, it's been my conception of it as well. is that we uh um and that's when we get to people like um you know our history of enlightened ones i mean you said jesus you know christ consciousness and i and one of my favorite socrates he's like you know first thing you've got to realize how much you don't know and then you can start really learning you can start really understanding what's going on and that's uh i don't know right and then you go wow it's almost infinite how much we don't know uh well that's why i also love um you know the the conceptualization of archetypes and how they focus our attention on these different things. So you've got, I don't know if you're a, well, I don't need to say where it came from.

It doesn't matter. But the idea that the fool is the precursor to the Savior in an archetypal sense. First you have to admit ignorance and look silly. You have to look like you don't know what you're doing because you don't. And you've got to embrace that. And then through the process of opening yourself, you know, the first step, like you were talking about the steps, admit there's a problem. then you can do something about it.

And admitting there's a problem means I don't know everything. I don't know how to handle this. I have more to learn. And then you can go forward through that opening into the place where I acquire the information I need. And I become, you know, embody the essence of the savior, which is the solution, solving the problem, fixing what was wrong before I admitted there was a problem that needed to be fixed.

I was going somewhere with all that. Maybe you got a comment. I just rambled sometimes. You're describing the process of surrendering the false beliefs that we've incorporated into this hierophant. The herophant, understand, and this is significantly contrary to science, but a mind is nothing more than a collection of beliefs. And we have a multitude of minds that guide us, but this hierophant creates an ego mind. in this ego mind

and our elementary level of advancement even through this range of consciousness guides our experiences and guides our understandings and it's only

and that is the I think he might have frozen for just a second now you're back you're back okay I don't know where I cut out it was just in the middle of that last sentence

for like three seconds. Okay, well, the the herophant creates an ego mind and that ego mind is what we are using right now to interact with each other. The ego mind is nothing more than

a collection of beliefs based upon our experiences. And so consequently, it is the primary source of stress and suffering. Suffering is nothing more than repeating the same experience over and over without getting the message that was brought to us.

And so our task, and what you were describing before I started speaking, is the process of surrendering those false beliefs that we've incorporated into our ego mind. The more completely we can do, and this process will take far beyond this range of consciousness, but we can begin at this range of consciousness. And those people that we have identified as saints are nothing more than people that have been successful in advancing through that process while still within this range of consciousness. The Buddha, Jesus, Laosu,

Kuan Yin, all of the names that we identify as having achieved enlightenment are special people. We learn by observing others and observing that they appear to be happier than we are, and so consequently we begin to emulate them. And through that emulation is how we further our advancement on the Enlightenment path or through the evolutionary process. They were purposeful, not as saviors,

but as models for us to, to emulate to advance ourselves along the Enlightenment path. Definitely. And I like that distinction too. It's like as a savior, if it's external to yourself, you know, the, the implication or, or inference or whatever is that they're going to do something to you or for you that fixes you. I think that's a fundamentally wrong conception of what I like your way you describe. They're role models. they're meant to show the way, blaze the trail.

You know, maybe they're the first one through the forest. They cut back all the undergrowth. Now you got a path. You still got to walk it. They can't walk it for you. You know, nobody's like,

it's the old, you know, psychologist does it take to a screwing a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb really has to want to change, you know. I love that joke. That's just,

you know, on so many levels. The light bulb is a basis for so many good stories like that. For sure. You know, and before that, the candle flame and then the fire and then then the sun in the sky. I mean, we've gone through so many layers of of these conceptual analogies for principles, theories, ways of understanding

the world. And speaking of which, too, there were a couple of things I wrote down. One was the, you know, the idea that the surrendering of false beliefs equates to a decrease in suffering. that I think that's a very like if people took nothing else from this conversation that would be like the big bold neon sign I would put up is uh and it's as simple as um you know if you're banging your head against a brick wall uh stop you're hurting yourself and the wall doesn't care and you're not going to get through the wall and why why do this to so first as we were saying admit there's a problem this is not working I have a false belief about that's motivating my behavior. to do something that is counterproductive or at least useless. What if I just don't do that? What if I at least stop and think? Maybe this is not something I should be doing. That right there is awakening.

That's all awakening is, is that realization, that point in your life that you get to when you realize that all that stuff that you've been doing is not making you happier. And that is a significant turning point in everyone's life. Because from that point, you start looking around for what alternatives are out there. And it's through those alternatives that we can use the analogy process. Well, I historically have believed this, but I see this as an opportunity, which seems more truthful to me.

And that determination is how you feel about it. Does it feel more like truth than what I did before? And so we try it. And sometimes it works. sometimes it doesn't, but those that do work make us, or give us the opportunity to experience more of our authentic self and more of our inherent happiness. And that's the measure of how we're doing is the happier we're getting, the better we're doing.

I, uh, so I've got a two, two great fascinations. I've always been fascinated with mythology of different Greek mythology, to capture me as a kid. Like, oh, this is amazing stuff. And it wasn't until later I realized, it's, just stories for kids for fun. These are like complete philosophical systems and the heroes and the gods, they mean

things. And that led me on to looking at Christianity and Buddhism and I've always had a, so those are my two big influences I'd say in terms of I am not a Buddhist, I'm not a Christian, but I appreciate that. And I was going somewhere with that. The idea of the yin yang and

I've always identified as much as, it's always appealed to me in a way or like I look at it as an aspirational figure, the laughing Buddha. That's who I want to be. I want to be the guy who's like just happy all the time. And, you know, everything's I love that old, it's, I haven't told this story in a long time, but that old, I think it was a Chinese folk tale of, you know, the farmer, he gets, uh, his, his horse has a, has a full. And his neighbor comes over and says, oh, what, that's, that's great. Uh, you know, now you've got

another horse and the farmer says, perhaps. And then that, we'll see. We'll see. And then that horse kicks his son in the leg and that breaks his son's leg. And the, uh, neighbor comes over and says, oh, that's terrible. The farmer says, we'll see. And then army recruiters come through town. They take all the able-bodied men, but they don't take the son. And the neighbor says, you know, oh, what a stroke of good luck. And the farmer says, we'll see.

It's like every, is it good or bad fortune? We don't know sometimes. I love those stories. Okay, okay, I remember where I was going with that, too. So in all of this journey and looking for balance and things and the yin-yangs, I consider one of the oldest human, conceptualizations for God or creator, as you would say. And knowing where to place the balance, knowing, you know, what is the proper balance? And so one thing I struggle with, and maybe this is

what I'm meant to struggle with in a way. I'm not meant to have the answer, but I need to keep looking. That's the direction I've chosen to focus is threading the needle between a kind of egotist, ego mind certainty and a kind of radical. skepticism of I can't say anything because nobody knows anything. It's impossible to know anything for sure. I don't know if you spoke to that threading that needle in your in your most recent book or if you're working on it for the next one. But like what advice do we give people beyond opening their mind to the principles? Like application sometimes I struggle with. Like what do you do in a given situation? I'm sure you've you've struggled with that in as I have in speaking with

say clients who are like, Doc, I don't know what to do. I mean, they don't call me Doc, but somebody did once. Not a doctor. I am not a doctor. Do not take medical advice from me. But, you know, and a lot of times I just default to, well, what's working or what's not working, like a utilitarian perspective for it. How do you feel about it?

But like when it comes down to some things or it's like they're genuinely confused. They don't know how to feel about it. They don't know what they should do. They don't know what the moral choice is. A lot of layers on this. But distilling it down, threading the needle between kind of an ego mind's certainty of advice giving and a radical skepticism of I can't tell you, I don't know

who am I to say. I don't think you can do either one in total. It's got to be a mixture of the both. There's somewhere, there's a path forward in there that, I mean, maybe you don't know any more than I do. I'll stop right there. Well, I don't know that I know, but I know that this range of consciousness, we don't

get proof. Everything that we experience is in thought. There's nothing that we can experience that doesn't come to us in thought. And that is purposeful. The design is that we will interpret our experiences according to what feels right at the time, and that what feels right at the time is indicative of where we are in the process. And this hierophant that we create, you can divide into three segments.

The elementary segment that we all essentially begin in requires immediate gratification. and that immediate gratification is a constant reinforcement of the authenticity of our false perception of self, our ego. And those individuals that are narcissistic, that become narcissistic, that become sociopaths, are doing nothing more than promoting the authenticity of their identity in seeking other immediate gratification to the detriment of those that are around them. So they're getting more of what they want, but they're choosing. One of the primary choices that we have to make during this range of consciousness is to decide whether we are going to polarize service to self or service to others. Those polarizing service to self will enhance that ego. They will enhance that heropant, that perception of self.

And they will become sociopath, psychopaths. A narcissist is a spectrum, as you probably know. But that spectrum leads into the psychopathic and sociopathic behaviors. That will extend far beyond this range of consciousness. And that is considered the indirect path in returning to the creator because they will go through billions of years enhancing that herifant and becoming totally isolated because everyone becomes a competitor for what they're receiving,

the energy that they're receiving from their behavior. And so consequently they reach a point where you can't go any further. You can't be in unity and be separate at the same time. And it literally is a brick wall. And so they will hit that brick wall, stay there for a long period of time, continue to seek immediate gratification.

But eventually they have to give that up. And it's just like the kid that dropped out of school. You got to go back and you have to learn, the material of following the service to others' path. What we have been describing here before has been the service to others' path, which is what the overwhelming majority of everyone in creation follows, and that is the surrendering of that perception of separation and eventual, with incremental greater unity,

and eventually total reunification with the creator. creation begins and ends at the same place, and there's only one way to get there. But you can meander throughout other alternatives for long periods of time, and that's entirely up to the individual. The only thing that perpetuates that herophant is fear. If we're not who we think we are, then who the hell am I. And that is what controls most of our experiences in this life. not this person that I have created, this heropant, then who am I? And there's a void there. And if there's, you can't see the other side until you start giving it up. And that's why the

Buddha said, come see. Just come experiment. Come see for yourself. And it is by doing that that we evolve along the service to others in reunification with the creator path. The experiences along the way are immutable for everyone, regardless of what your historical experiences are. And you reach a certain area, a certain range of consciousness, and consciousness essentially will behave the same as every other consciousness at that level of consciousness. So people that demonstrate the things you were alluding to,

morality and ethics and integrity, those things that we value on, a priori a prior a basis appear naturally as we advance along the enlightenment path and heal ourselves

of false perceptions of self and that only increases as we evolved higher ranges of consciousness yeah so if we were to oops you're up right in the mic

if I was trying to distill that too for my own takeaway it would probably be threading the needle is a matter of being open to the question itself. Like if I'm looking for where's the middle ground between certainty and, you know, ego mind certainty and radical skepticism of, of everything, it would just be being open to learning, open to questioning.

Vulnerability. Vulnerability. Yeah. Yeah. With yourself. Not with anything outside of you, but with yourself. As you allow yourself to be vulnerable with yourself, that requires ever, deeper honesty with yourself.

And we seek intimacy. But erroneously, we seek intimacy outside of ourselves. The only intimacy that we can really experience is that intimacy with ourself, where we are aware of and comfortable with all aspects of ourselves and all of those hidden compartmentalized behaviors that we like to describe in the mental health industry become open. and we can look at those and put them out on the table and says, yes, that was me and I learned from that,

this, that and the other that's no longer me because I've put it into perspective and it's gone. Yeah. And you mentioned something that I wanted to get back around to as well. It's like the title of your book, The Enigma of Consciousness. We haven't really talked about what consciousness is defined it or described it in any specific way.

I mean, I would just throw out there as opening a door to talking about that is that, is that in a way, like, you know, even though we're the, say, psychological professionals were supposed to understand the mind, the psyche, the soul, or whatever, so far as that goes, we have no idea. All we know is that we seem to experience something we call consciousness. We have thoughts that occur in our mind and we don't know where they come from very often. What is inspiration?

What is this spontaneous generation? I mean, I'm mystified by it. And I think of it as, we're talking about the, you know, Maslow's hierarchy, but just that the pyramid as a symbol, we've got a very ancient, I think it's attributed to Masonic, but I think it's older than that. It goes when Egyptians had the idea, too, of the, of the sun, ra, you know, the sun god above the peak of the pyramid. And there's a gap there. And so you've got this, this, say, a pyramid of knowledge, all the things you can understand and through, through experience. And then there's a gap. And then there's the sun, the light, the flame of, of inspiration, the light bulb that turns on. And what I consider to be magic, how I conceptualize that is, whatever happens in that gap, the flame doesn't touch the pyramid.

There's no, the flame is not the peak of the pyramid, it's above it. And something happens in that gap. And, you know, so I, as I was saying, I conceptualize what happens in that gap

to be magic in a sense. Part of why I call myself wizards kind of lean into that, into that terminology of descriptive terminology, terminology, but I was going somewhere with that. I'll just stop. You get your thoughts. Okay. Well, if you understand that all of creation is a thought experiment, which philosophers use all the time, and this, when the creator projected itself as an analog projection,

that is a concept. Everything from that creator is the subject. down to fire is consciousness, but it's all conceptual. Now, we perceive it to be real. I mean, we can feel it as a posterior stuff because we perceive that we can feel it and touch it and so forth. As we near the end of the next range of consciousness, one of our curriculum requirements will be to surrender the authenticity of the physical.

and so we no longer become physical. We still are that consciousness pattern that we've created through our journey up to that point. But we no longer will need the physical and no longer will incarnate in the physical environment other than as we choose to. And that happens all the time. The higher consciousness incarnates for a period of time

to provide us with lessons or provide us with a model and then they disappear. they don't yeah FBI would go crazy because they don't have any history and they just evaporated it's yeah yeah I think that thought experiment I've described dreams exactly as that and I think that comes back around to my my comparisons my nested understanding of things like you know dreams are a thought experiment we create based on our experience in the waking world just as much as the waking world is the thought experiment of the universe in that sense or the next level up experiencing itself in that kind of way that isn't any more

real or tangible. We use these words like tangible. Like you were knocking on the desk. Of course we think it's real. We can feel it. I mean, what else are we supposed to think? But then we also,

you know, I think it's a very, you were talking about different stages we go through as well. And I think the stages we go through in life of being, you know, ignorant, needful bundle of,

bundle of desires as a child. I mean, we can't experience it. I'm hungry. I'm in pain. I cry. You know, and then we move further and further away from that.

going, well, realizing that different layers of, breaking through different layers of illusion in life. And then having that as a metaphor for, here's, here's something I wanted to ask you too. And maybe this is leaning into the spooky woo too much, but I find it fascinating. I do, I do a very hard line. That Yinyang keeps coming back. So I stay on the in a way, materialist,

psychological side of dream interpretation. We're going to look at it. We're going to talk about it. It's going to have personal meaning to you, I don't get into the spooky woo because I can't differentiate it. So if you came to me and said, Ben, I had a dream about the future. I think this is going to happen. I couldn't tell you if that is a prophetic dream or not until it either happens or it doesn't. When I can tell you what dreams are or are not prophetic, I think they do exist. I think people have told me they've had them. They understand that feeling is not just a deja vu. It's something distinctly different when they witness it happening in real life.

I believe them, but I couldn't tell them ahead of time. You know, that's just not a skill in my, I'm trying to admit my own ignorance on that. I'm not going to tell you something I don't know, just to puff up my ego, so to speak. Okay, long story, long story short on that one. The idea of, I just, I listen to like Joe Rogan and whatnot, and he talks about DMT and machine elves and the idea of, and a lot of people go into, what was it, Tucker Carlson lately was saying things about what we consider aliens or really actually demons. and I actually believe, right?

I actually believe that conceptually, you know, we can allow ourselves to be possessed by spirits. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's the spirit of jealousy. And then there's the spirit of generosity. We become what we invite to inhabit us in that sense. And, you know, I'll throw it wide open in that regard. I don't know if you think these are entities that exist or, you know,

is it necessarily true that every concept? as an entity in its own way. There's a lot. There's a lot in there. I'll throw it back to you. But that idea of, you know, where do you go on maybe some of the metaphysical level of some of these things? No spirit can, no service to others polarized,

higher being is going to involuntarily occupy your body. Yep, you have to invite it. I'm not even sure the demons keep coming up. And the service to self-hire. consciousness do not have the capacity to do that, but they do have the capacity. Well, let me preface this, that we perceive that we create thought. We don't create thought. We don't have the capacity to create thought. We attract thoughts according to how we are. We are magnetic. And so if we are creating ourselves in a negatively polarized service to self-polarized fashion, then we

will attract those thoughts that allow a higher consciousness service to self-entity push those thoughts in our way. And so, you know, it's kind of like in Ghostbusters, you know, they're running down the street and the ghost isn't really going through them. They're going through the ghosts because they're not paying attention. They've attracted that experience. And so what we perceive to be demons you know, religious folks like to refer to demons as,

well, the devil made me do that, is nothing more than they have opened themselves to that opportunity and a service to self-individual has put that thought in which we can't distinguish our thoughts from other thoughts for the most part. We can, we can, you know, that's part of becoming mindful, is recognizing your thoughts, controlling your thoughts. That's the whole basis of CBT is becoming aware. of your thoughts.

But people attract their thoughts. And so if they're fearful by nature, if they have that thought in their herophant, that they are demons, then they're probably going to see demons because they've attracted that thought. But they're not authentic, and all you have to do is that, wait a minute,

that's not my thought. Dismiss that. Replace it with the thought that's more pleasing. And it's that simple. to Hollywood wouldn't like that idea because they make so much money off of demons. Yeah, that's a, that's a fascinating thing. And then we get into the, I mean, let's say someone clip this show and they did, you know, 10, 15 seconds a minute of us talking about this.

I was going to go, these people are crazy. We're talking about, you know, metaphorical things that are metaphorically true. It's like, I don't think you can draw a pentagram and sprinkle some sulfur and poof, a physical corporeal entity comes forth and says, I'll serve you, you know, that kind of thing. It's like, but, but on these level, this conceptual level of things, I think it's absolutely true. You know, as we become what we put our energy into, what we resonate with, what we put out there

and attract to us. We are magnetic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We attract the nature of our experiences. And I love the, you know, I think it's, uh, the word is, he, etymology. Etymology.

I get etymology and etiology confused, you know, well, you know, the study of the history of a thing and then the cause of a thing. Which I'm also fascinated, uh, uh, the tur. Well, this is a complete tangent. The term science was from the word, you know, science or cns, meaning the cause of something. Like the, you know, so what does the scientist do they investigate causes? What made this happen? How does this work?

Complete tangent. Coming back. But the etymology of the word demon, and it actually goes back to Socrates or perhaps before, but he called it or in the Greek. conception or whatever it was daimon it was the inner voice the idea of whatever whatever that thought is they conceived of it as muses giving inspiration to to historians and artists and different things where does inspiration come why draw this and not that why paint this brush stroke instead of another that they understood these forces as being external to ourselves and you know the whole process of um enlightenment to them was

was yeah was was was praying to the right gods in a sense it was focusing your energy in the right direction seeking the right motivation towards towards a given end um it was going somewhere with all that just it's just the idea of you know daemon became demon and we thought of being possessed by demons i think it's i've i've seen it lately in more more in the last few years i think since i started doing this of people who look like they're legitimately demon possessed they're just so people that are vicious and and petty and it's all kinds of malicious maliciousness and I'm like wow you are you've got some bad juju in you that you've got to get out but you don't even see it well man if you think if you accept the belief into your your ego into your here a fan that demons exist

which immediately makes you a magnet for those types of thoughts every possible thought that we can think has already, it's in creation, it's there, it's just waiting for us to attract it. The only thing that distinguishes a really smart person from a genius is the genius has surrendered that the authenticity of that herophant, enough that they open themselves to greater ideas that are already created and just waiting for us to accept them. And so, you know, if your orientation, if you have that emotional baggage of fear and you've been indoctrinated that there are demons for all of your life, you're going to be looking for demons.

You're going to be attracting that thought of the existence of demons. And whatever your wishes are will be fulfilled. Yeah. Because you're attracting those thoughts. I conceptualize it as, you know, there's, as you were saying, there's forces for good and forces for evil. and we attract it. So I think there's angels as much as there is demons. And we say we would appeal to someone's better angels is the one of the phrases we we've got handed down to us. And it's like these

these forces exist external to ourselves that we yeah, that we you're going to get what you go looking for. You know, so if you're looking to serve yourself, as you say, you're going to attract those demonic entities. And if you're looking to serve others, I think that's that's where where we would say you're attracting angels, the difference between a petty wrathfulness and a righteous anger. I mean, they're both in a way, they feel very similar sometimes. I mean,

not identical and there's distinctions, but it's still, they're both under that category of anger. And it's like for the right reason towards, yeah, and towards the right cause. You're describing varying degrees of intensity. And the more intensely that you believe a certain thing,

the more significantly you're going to attract those types of, thoughts. For sure. The more fearful you are, the more fear-provoking thoughts you're going to attract. Absolutely. That also made me think of a concept that hit me lately. And I don't know. It probably goes back further, but it really kind of crystallized lately was I started to question.

There goes the cat knocking over my phone. Luckily, got it on mute. She's probably telling me we should get to the dream thing in a minute. And it's something to say. She does. She's my little, it's also interesting, too, like people look at, it's a complete tangent. Where was I going before that? Oh, shit.

Okay. Don't let me forget invention versus discovery. I think you'll appreciate the distinction. But I also have a, I love the concept or the idea or the conceit of, you know, cats being familiar to a witch or a wizard or a little imps. And I pay attention to them too. And let's say when she hopped up on the table, I said, oh, we've been talking for an hour. I better get to the dream thing.

Did she cause that inspiration in my mind by jumping up there? Or did she just break a train of thought where I was, you know, happy to go in one direction. And I go, I better reconsider and think about the bigger picture time. And then if she did, whether or not she did intentionally or the universe put her in my path, that is the result. The result is I looked at the clock. because she jumped on the table. Wow. What is that?

That's magic in my mind. I'm like, why? So anyway, but I remember, let me get this out before it. Completely, completely get lost. I've come to this realization. I think it struck me like an epiphany. Like it just feels unbelievably true that there is no such thing as humans inventing anything. We talk about people who invent something, but what we describe is how they came to

discovery. And I think all the way back to was Archimedes in the tub and the volume, the water displacement. I think it was the guy's name. He ran right. Eureka. Eureka. I found it. It's like he didn't invent the concept so much as observed what was happening, realized what it was and was able to share it with others. So I, the way I try to explain this to people is like, try to imagine something which cannot exist. And they're like, what do you mean? And like, anything, anything which is physically impossible in this world or whatnot, you can't do it. All you can do is observe or experience what is possible. And as you were saying, it's already out there.

Like, I don't think humans invented the language of math. I think we discovered mathematical principles, which pre-existed. So I really believe in, some people might say this is silly or who cares or you're, mental masturbation or you know how's that navel gazing going for you but the idea i think it's a matter of humility in my mind it's like humans don't have the capacity to create anything but we do have the capacity to observe to discover what is already there uh and i think that comports maybe with with with how you're conceptualizing this as well you you might agree with what i'm trying absolutely absolutely everything that you know we um one of the podcast that i um um currently do is

called chatting with the Arcturians. And my significant other is a vocal channel and we have a chat with the Arcturians which are it's an extraterrestrial group that has simply been in the system

longer than we have and they gave us a design for free energy attraction that they said that several people around the world are working on independently, and the design is intended just to assist them, that it's a handheld device that we will all in the near future have that will power our car, power our house, three or four

of them will power a large factory or an office building, and so we no longer will have to rely on what we call fossil fuels, which they laugh at, and that we call it fossil fuel. and this is there. It's existing. All that we have to do is open our mind enough in order to allow it to come in. Einstein simply, it was very humble in spite of his genius, and he simply allowed himself to the information to come into him, and he had the training to understand it. That's a key. I mean, you know, they can give me all sorts of physics information, and it just go in one ear and out the other. It just wouldn't, it wouldn't stop in between. The same way with math.

I can't, I can't math. I'm not a math magician. Yeah, never do math in public. Right? It's more embarrassing to me than me naked. I'll tell you. Well, the first thing, well, you started talking about the free energy thing. And I'm like, God, I hope nobody, no powers that be, decide you need to be silenced.

God, that seems to happen all the time. All these people like going back to Tesla, all these people that had some great ideas and I wonder I mean this was maybe leading and we're not going to go too much further in this direction but just the idea of um our political circumstances around the world not just in America but everywhere I lean into the idea of it being a spiritual war that there's as as people invite into them different energies we've got a lot of people in control that are are very much in tune with the demonic energy if we put it that way And they don't want people waking up.

They don't want the good energy. They, they, they, they, so they manipulate and manufacture situations that keep us. Their continued to exist and is continue to find domination and subjugation. It is. Yeah. If the public is not, is, if the public is aware, then they can no longer dominate and subjugate. Yeah. So if we get, and, and a lot of that is, is, is maintaining material suffering.

in a way that, you know, so this is why, basically my explanation, my offered suggestion for why there would be such, you know, why would anyone not want free energy? Well, the people that want you to suffer, the people that we want to, these, these, I would imagine these, these intelligences or, or, demons or, you know, spiritual entities on this higher plane that are taking, as you say, the wrong path and very much invested in their ego and, and whatnot, they will cease to exist if the world moves over towards the the awakening side i mean it's like it's like they're fighting for their own survival to maintain yeah to maintain and you can't blame them in that regard but you do have to kill them we too and you know this is not a call to do any violence in the real

world this is purely a spiritual war uh we got we got to kill the demonic energy and just get it out of there and i you know that's what i'm working towards i hope in my small way in my little way with dreams individually. If I can help people realize that number one dreams can be useful and can serve a purpose towards moving you in that direction of better self-understanding, of shedding yourself of suffering, of inviting in more better angels to move you in the right direction. So that's the objective of all the books that I've written, everything that I'm doing our conversation now that that's my objective is to provide the information to people that they can can know the truth and assume responsibility for their own progression

through the contemporary process. Yeah, very cool. Well, I think we could probably talk about this for another hour, but I think both of us probably have more things to do today. I've got to get a haircut at some point. This is, ooh, it's out of control. We're going to get to trim it up a little bit. But, you know, if you call yourself a wizard, you've got to have the beard in the hair.

You've got to do it. Got to do it. It's like a witch having a hat to, or, you know, or a cat perched on her shoulder or something like that. Or it's stirring a cauldron. Well, having seen you for the first time, I'm disappointed you didn't have a wizard's hat on. I have one. You might be able to, oh, you can't see it.

I do, I do have one. It doesn't fit very well. And it kind of blocks half my face. I do have the wizard. I've thought about doing that. Offering people, uh, the addition, had on or off your call. If they think it's silly, I won't wear it.

But I just, for the, for the record. I have the hat. I have a staff too. Because I'm heading towards being an old, beat it old man. Okay, well, let's do this. I'm going to make a note of the time. And we're going to see if I can be of some benefit to you in this regard today. What do we got?

Move over, Kitty. 10. 103. And we're starting off here. Okay. So this is the part where we do the dream thing. First step for me is shut up and listen. Our friend's going to, our friend Dean's going to tell us his dream.

and then we're going to talk about it and see if we can make sense. So I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his Dreamscapes program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much much more.

To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. Okay.

Well, I have dreams, some of which I remember and some of which I don't. The ones that I remember are usually profound, in other words, they wake me up in the middle of the night. And I make it a point to get up and I literally type the dream out. that, you know, it's that memorable and that detailed. And this particular dream occurred a long time ago, about 20 years ago,

but it was foundational. And the dream began and the environment was an outdoor setting. It was at night. It was outside of a... modest house that had no significant. It had no significance to me. But it was surrounded by large bushes, well-trimmed, well-maintained shrubbery all around the house.

And there were two to three dozen men, of which I was one. And we were all dressed in old-fashioned day-fashioned. coats with the tails but not formal wear and we all had top hats and I presume from that that it was supposed to be a period piece but we had an instructor and the instructor was teaching us how to play this game in the game very simply was similar like tag but we all had a ball of a electricity. The ball that we had did not hurt us, but when we came in contact with someone else's ball, it stung. It didn't hurt us. It just stung. And we were taught to the gay to evade the other people's hitting us with their ball of electricity. When they hit us, then we were

out and if you threw your ball to get someone out, you got your ball back and then you would continue on with the game until you were hit and then you would be out of the game. And I proved to be very never, I was a novice as was everyone else and I proved to be very efficient at the game as was winning a large number of the games. And then we began to learn to fly. in the course of this. And at first it was very, uh, just almost floating. We weren't really flying. There wasn't any control or propulsion to it. And we would float as part of our efforts to evade being hit with other people throwing their balls of electricity at us. And that progressed for some period of time and we all gained proficiency in our flying skills and learned how to propel

ourselves and I became very proficient at that and became the object of virtually everyone trying to get me out. But I was able, for the most part, to evade their attacks with their balls of energy until the culmination of the dream was I was evading everyone's attacks with their balls of electricity, and I was going faster and faster and faster to avoid being, and they all threw their balls at once, and there was this wall of electric balls that were coming towards me, and I knew that if they all hit me, that it would be. And so I was in distress, and then the thought occurred to me, just make yourself break up into minute pieces, which I did.

And when I did that, the balls just went through me and then the dream was over. But I wasn't dead. You know, I just avoided the balls of concrete, of electricity that were passing through me. my emotion in the dream initially it was fun you know we were having fun as the we were when we were beginning to fly the game the intensity of the game increased and there was a certain degree of anxiety over being hit with the balls but as the dream neared its end there was just blatant fear as I was speeding faster and faster to try to avoid these balls.

And then as soon as I dissolved into the infinite number of pieces, all the emotion was gone and I was just joyful. Okay. That is fascinating. And I think, I mean, there's a reason I generally talk to people for a little bit, not just to give you a chance to show your stuff and to talk about your philosophy and just to have an interesting conversation, but also to get to know someone a little bit. little bit. And all of this was like, no wonder you're at where you're at and we're having

this conversation today when this dream came to you 20 years ago. It all seems to line up very, very well in my mind. But we'll go, you know, we'll go through it. Um, well, of course we will. And not to not to impose my vision, but I'm like certain points along the line. I'm like, Bing, Bing, Bing, some things popped up to to definitely, definitely focus on you got to give it bad. I wonder if she's saying put down the pen and just talk. I don't know what you're doing. I'm trying to listen to my aminals a little bit more lately. Um, okay. So in the very beginning, and we got, we got our notes here too. You're outside a house, but, but specifically the house is unremarkable. It's just it is what it is. Uh, it's a house. So I think the fact that, well, I said unremarkable.

You said, you used a different word that I don't think I wrote down. I put my own note in there. Um, but, but, but, but what I think you were trying to get across is that the street wasn't about the house, but it is the part, it's part of the setting, but it isn't about the house. Like, like, like, like, like, the more detail you put into something, the more important it is. Like, you never went into the house. Didn't have any interaction with the house, but you were outside of house. You weren't outside an apartment building deep in the city or, or, you know, a concrete jungle. You weren't on a mountain top. You weren't at the bottom of the ocean. There's a lot of, I do a lot of counterfact. actuals too. So there's something about, you know, this kind of, um, a setting that says something about why this is maybe important to you, um, but also the, uh, the idea that you'd specifically placed well manicured bushes. My, what I was going to ask about that was, did they compliment the house or were they more obscuring the house? Did it feel like they were protecting the house? Like they're behind a, behind a wall. Yeah, they obscured the house. I mean, the house was virtually, you couldn't see the house for the

shrubbery. Okay. You knew it was there and you could see, you know, the roof or a corner or something like that. But it never saw the door, never saw any windows. It was just a feature of the environment.

Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't, so if you were to set this in a, set this milieu in a slightly larger, you know, Where did you think you were or did you have any sense of that in terms of like, we're in a forest. We're on the plains. It was a large field around the house.

It wasn't in a subdivision. It was a large, you know, just a lot of open, pet grass and stuff around the house. Okay. That's what I was looking at too is the idea of, you know, rural versus suburban. So, yeah, you would need perhaps more space to have this game. We could look at it purely that way in terms of, okay, what's a logical thought process for why you, created that, but you very well could have been playing this game of tag running up and down through a skyscraper.

You could have been doing it in a suburban area, but you didn't. So you've got a house that doesn't really, that isn't the focus, but it needs to be present. It's not that there was no house. There was a house. But it's a house obscured by bushes as well. So it's a, it's something you're not even seeing very clearly. It's something that's present that you don't see clearly. But then you also give yourself a wide rural.

landscape that's kind of the um so if we think of cities and then rural settlements and then wilderness that's that's kind of the middle ground between this kind of half wild this is you know people don't live very close together here you're almost more frontiersy living on your own in this kind of rural um rural settings a lot of room a lot of elbow room um when i discuss the setting in that way does it does any do any ideas come to mind any any any focuses or or um thoughts inspired by those descriptions in terms of getting an understanding of why this setting what does it mean to you no it was neutral and you know the house served is kind of a a focal point that we played this game around in other words when you were on one side of it

obviously other people on the other side couldn't find you couldn't hit you whatever okay and so from that standpoint it it served as kind of a uh an obstacle Okay. Yeah. So what I'm trying to tease out is you didn't like I said, set it in an inside an apartment complex. You didn't set it in the forest where there's thick trees. So there's something about the idea of a house. This is where I go to the quasi dream dictionary idea. There's a lot of thought that's been put into the idea that houses represent our physical body in a way or rooms in a house are different parts of our mind, different areas that we segregate from one another and invest different meaning and emotions into. So the idea that the house is an

obstacle you're working around, if we conceptualize it as kind of like the self, maybe you, in a way, like you're, um, this is what struck me when I, when I was, um, listening to you describe it is the idea of shedding this false consciousness. If we think we are our body, then it will be an impediment to playing the game properly in the broader, in the broader context. So in that way, if you were to conceptualize this visualization in that way, you've minimized the importance of this ego self, maybe, this representation possibly of you or the concept of the house as the physical body.

You've obscured it behind bushes. You can't see it clearly and don't need to see it clearly. It's kind of nondescript. It's unremarkable, but it is present. And then it's also an obstacle in the game, which can be used to your benefit to hide behind or as a block to the throwing of a ball to a target you're trying to hit. So there's, it's like a factor that has to be accounted for more than it is the reason for being here. If I say it that way, does that feel right or is there, feel free to see it.

say no, that's, that's completely way off. I'm not invested in being correct. Well, there wasn't, I didn't feel any attachment to the house. I don't even know that it was my house. It was just, it was just there. Yeah, I didn't have any emotion about it and didn't identify when there's no comfort that came from the house, never went in the house. And it was, it was like we were all, um,

visitors or guests to this event. Okay. So none of us really, you know, attached to the, to the house. And you said there was an instructor there in no sense that it was his house. No. And he was never saw a face. You know, I had the perception of a figure there, but there was no, no detail to the instructor. Gotcha.

And were you seeing all of this pretty much through your own eyes or almost third person? Oh, he's all through my own eyes. Okay. Sometimes that's significant. Sometimes it's not. But that's a good thing to know. So you put yourself in old-fashioned clothing. And what came to my mind was like late 1800s, early 1900s?

Yeah, probably. You know, that's when that type of day coat would be prevalent. Yeah, that's what came to my mind. And top hats. So you were not overly forable, but I mean, you didn't show up in a swimsuit or not. naked. You didn't show up. You had a certain, what it feels like to me is, is, is the proper amount of respect for the, to,

to the circumstance. You know, it was not overly formal, but it was not casual. This is like, you know, bring your best self, um, in, in, in, to the right degree. It was a feeling of rigidity. Oh, there was. Okay. Yeah. You know, with being everyone dressed that way, there was, there was kind of structure and rigidity to that. Okay. That's an interesting connection. So I was going to say, what do you feel about that time period that that clothing represents?

And it was it was a kind of rigid structure. Very Victorian, very limited perspective, a lot of social taboos. Gotcha. So these weren't people who were, say, enlightened before they arrived. They were actually, they were superficial. superficial product of their of their culture to demonstrating a lot of the social norms that were expected of the time right um rather than okay that's a different motivation too there's the idea of I do this because I wish to demonstrate respect or I do this because I'm told that's how I have to behave that was socially acceptable yeah socially acceptable um so you've got a kind of every man in a sense and And from a different time as well, what occurred to me and it may or may not be relevant is, there may be something else about that time in terms of, like for me, and again, this is not you. It's not my dream.

I have no special answers. I'm not hearing spirits. But if so if I have it if you want it. Right. Well, we're sharing it together. I'm having an experience with you. I love it. Right.

if I if though that symbolism appeared in my dream I would be speaking to most likely the idea of that's where a lot of my re-repe created dream books come from so that would be my recent experience and and I have a perhaps a special love of the scientific advancement of discovery and change in in in the explosion and growth of knowledge that came out of those times late 1800s into early 1900s uh it's so much of our our our under under the understanding of the world changed and expanded. I don't know if you spend any time studying that time period or if you have any special fascination. The tail end of the age of enlightenment. Yeah. And really, significant changes occurred.

Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the concepts that are foundational to the world today, I mean, if we just look at Freud's interpretation of dreams in 1900 and then what he did and Young in expanding the idea of, you know, studying the mind can be medical. It can be scientific.

It doesn't have to be spiritual. even though, you know, Freud dismissed that one. Young embraced it a little bit more to my big influences in this. Well, of course, foundational standing on the shoulders of giants here. So there might be that kind of an element to it as well. It's like these are people who are a product of their time. It's a little rigid, a little Victorian, but it's also these are the people that open the door to where we are today, a better understanding of some things.

If that resonates with you a little bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. it's like these are the if anyone was going to learn how to play this game in your mind maybe these are the kind of people who were best suited capable able open to the possibility capable is a way you know you can't take can't teach a dog to drive a car or whatever maybe you can't i don't know but that that idea uh it's just someone's got to be capable of doing something before they can be willing and then be taught uh so but but also there um yeah this as you said that contradiction of um these are these are the people able, but also they're in most need of this kind of training. It's like, open your mind a little bit. Let's get out of this stodgy, going through the motions type of thing. I really understand,

you know, do it with intention versus out of expectation in some kind of ways. Well, and we were playing a game in the midst of this structure, the clothing structure too. Interesting too. So you weren't in, say, athletic apparel, even appropriate to the time, say 1800s or whatever.

It was still, yeah, So this is these kind of stuffy Victorianish is almost a comical scene of like these proper proper What is it reserved? What's the word of repressed? Almost a repressed kind of people like being taught to Hey loosen up play a game. This is a game. It's a funny that I love that the idea of you know it's okay. So it's a game. It's serious, but also have fun with it. You know, it's you want to win. You want to learn how to play it well, but winning isn't isn't the goal. But winning is how do I describe that? It's like the idea of winning is how you demonstrate it. It's like the idea of winning is how you demonstrate. demonstrate you, you understand and, and have learned the game to the best of your ability. And, and better than others, perhaps, is can you do that demonstration in a way,

even if it's something as simple as can you, how many numbers of pie can you memorize? Me, 3.14. I cannot remember the rest. Never could. Right. Right? So, so there's going to be, that's a game. Memorize pie. Uh, fail. But there's people who can do it much better. than me and they're they're naturally suited to it i'm rambling on on this one too so but this this all sets the sets the tone in a way going forward on on what are you doing there and why and the first thing that came to my mind is these energy balls the the phrase that that popped into my head was spiritual energy does that resonate with you or did you conceptualize it some other way i mean was it just pure electricity yeah it's symbolic that it uh it became more uh for a

while it became that, but towards the end as they became dangerous in quantity, they became more associated with the lesser desirable ideologies of the civilization.

Initially, they, initially they, you know, were unique. Obviously, we had not encountered those before, and so we were enamored with them, but as they became more directed and harmful, then they lost that and were representative more of societal ills, I guess. Yeah. And that's also something that popped into my head along with that is like, wow, we were just talking about this whole idea of the spiritual war between angels and demons in a way, these higher vibrational or entities, however you, however you phrase it. And I think this is a fantastic, iconic, imagistic, you know, hierographic, however you want to phrase it, but a representation of, you know, what if you thought about what's inside of you and manifesting it and then the idea that you could

use it in the world to accomplish things. And I think I'm not, kind of lost my train and thought there in terms of like, I had a much better way of saying that. But this is all part and parcel of the idea of, you know, as you, you know, what is it? We touch other people with our thoughts. We're like psychic monkeys.

We make vibrations with our mouth and our thoughts appear in other people's head. Like, what is it even happening here? I love that. Joe Rogan said it much better than I did. He's got a lot of great ideas. I like his complete tangent.

I like his explanation of like, you know, what happened with the pyramids of like it was built by these other people and they had psychic powers and all this. And then one day they disappeared and the Egyptians where they're like, who built this? We did. We built this.

They just started taking credit for it. Anyway, that's a complete tangent. But we can kind of throw our psychic energy at people. to touch them. And it's kind of what we do when we share ideas. And if we share good ideas, then, you know,

maybe other people, it's not so bad if they get tagged. But if we share bad ideas, you don't want to get hit by those and then kind of infected by it in a way. It's negativity, it's the cycle of abuse, that kind of a thing.

But it is, in a conceptual way, we've got kind of a global game of tag going on with throwing ideas at each other. the idea of not wanting to be hit by ideas is not wanting to be maybe influenced against your will in a sense i'm going to stop there and just if you have any feedback on the idea of this energy touching people and influence and communication all of those things well remember the the balls of electricity didn't hurt us but they stung

with other people and I'm getting a little a little freezing on your end we might need just a couple of seconds last thing I heard you say was remember the balls didn't sting us but they stung other people I should make a note giddy what time was this

127 oh no I wonder if it's going to cut us off hey you're reconnecting there you go I see you yeah yeah we're all good I'll make a little it there. Can you hear me? Anyway, what I was saying before we cut out,

the stinging was a specific description that was part of the dream of you know, these energy balls. Yeah. And, you know, it wasn't just didn't feel good. It wasn't harmful,

you know, in an isolated basis. But that was a description that was prevalent in the dream. Unpleasant. Yeah. And I wonder if that's, um, see if we, what does it mean to have this bundle of electricity, essence, spiritual energy, whatever it is, to be stung by someone else's.

There's, what is it that's happening in that exchange? What is, what is, what is it? But when you got hit, then you were out of that game. Okay. The thought just occurred to me that you weren't, playing with other people, that these were all you, competing ideas within you, narrow, winnowing out, you know, because what is it, what is a, what is a game where there's only one king of the mountain in a way? It's, you know, it's a defeating all the other contenders. And if we think of that as ideas, it's kind of what we do when we're rolling through possibilities at looking for the truth. I don't know if that resonates.

with you in any way. And the other players, as I think about it, as I recall it, were all faceless. It was at night, but there was enough ambient light, you know, that we could see to do this. And certainly the light from the energy balls, you know, gave us some immediate perspective. But I don't recall any of the other players having any facial definition. Yeah. And that can be significant or not, depending. Um, like all things, uh, you know, if it was specific people, I would say, you know,

if it was your, um, you know, your aunt and uncle and then that kid you knew in high school and then that guy you worked with once. I think it would all, but, but the idea, I think it really makes more sense to me in the, in the context of everything. And again, I'm not the end. I'll be all. I'm not hearing the voice of spirits. You tell me if I'm wrong.

Um, that there's, there's a reason they're faceless and then it's, it's not that it represents different aspects of, yourself necessarily, but the, but there's a process going on, a winnowing, a narrowing of, a focusing. And sometimes we're at war with ourselves. We're not sure what to believe and sometimes we're afraid of the truth. I don't know if you've read, uh, if you read sci-fi fantasy at all. Um, there's a series called, uh, The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. I don't if that sounds familiar.

Mm-mm. Yeah. Fair enough. He's a, uh, Pacific Northwester like myself. Uh, and he, his books are, are, uh, deep with philosophy. Like, it's almost like he started with a philosophy and said, I'm going to write a book around this, around these different concepts.

And wizards, this influenced me a lot, of course. Wizards have a lot of different rules. And each book, the first book in the series is called the wizard's first rule. And then as you go on through the series, this wizard, uh, Zedicus Zorander, he describes more of the rules and how they apply in the world. And it's kind of like, you know, understanding philosophy properly and putting it into practice. Well, the wizard's first rule is people believe what they want to be true or what they are afraid might be true. And that's, you know, that was powerful for me.

I'm like, yeah, this is the, that's like the breakdown of self-delusion. It's like we are afraid, so we believe out of fear that this bad thing might happen. So we're going to respond to it as if it's real. Or we believe what we want, what we would prefer. I choose, you know, what do we call, you know, wishful thinking. We invest belief in that. So sometimes we're at war with ourselves. over over what we think might be true and what we would prefer were true and what

we're afraid might be true. And so we could get a little triangulation there sometimes. I'm not a big fan of this, but as I think it was Nelson Mandela or someone said, you know, there's your truth, my truth, and the truth. And it's true to some degree. But if two people are on opposite sides of something, one is probably more true than the other sometimes. But this is going way off there.

that's what I'm seeing with this, or what makes the most sense to me is, is, um, it's a game. So it's not, or at least it starts out as a game. And, and, and, uh, I think oftentimes we, we have these, um, we have a, blaz-eer playful approach to philosophizing until it gets real, until it gets serious, until we have to make a decision in some ways. And a decision is a, is a death. Uh, it's the death of one idea. And the, the commitment to another you know you can only choose one path um so there's something here about you know different representations of spiritual energies or thoughts ideas and they're they're being used to and it it stings a bit when we have to admit we were wrong there's something i think to that idea of like getting hit by someone else's ball of spiritual energy being unable to

successfully evade it is is is an idea of like uh well you got me uh that's that's a minor indignity i put shit i had to let my ego die just a little bit i was i wasn't right that time um and but if you get far enough down the road towards building building an argument and maybe there's something you wish were true and you're afraid it's not going to come true or you're afraid might be true and you're desperately trying to to avoid it um there's there's more of a the threat of death, the death of an idea, the ego death of a certainty in a certain belief that is being threatened by these stings. The game gets real in a way. I'm going to stop there for just a second and get your feedback on all of those thoughts that just run around my head.

But I'm thinking how the dream felt as my proficiency grew and I became more of the target of more of the other players, then the game transitioned from a playful game to a much more serious game and concluded with the ultimate seriousness. Yeah. Go ahead. And I interpret dreams according to the feelings that you feel as you go through the experiences of the dream because the dream is just another experience. and so there's great learning to be had in dreams

as there are in our day-to-day experiences. But, and kind of playing on what we were talking about before we started talking about the dream, my process has been a perpetual surrendering, of old beliefs that have been societally dominant. You know, we don't create our own beliefs. We absorb. We get it by osmosis.

And surrendering those to allow space for greater truths. And so, you know, that rings from that standpoint that, you know, obviously these balls of energy are symbolic. like, and they were, you know, sporadic, and I was good at avoiding them. And while the game was still a game, it as it got more serious, and I became more of the target of the other players, then the seriousness of the game transformed to not so playful.

Yeah. And that you're actually, explanation rings true from that standpoint of my surrendering of these false beliefs that created my identity and transformed my perception of self in order to have the willingness and the openness to absorb these new information and and to be able to accept it as truth because it feels right that I historically have would have been a much like most people and on an individual one-to-one

basis probably rejected them because they so contradicted the institutional beliefs that we are all programmed with. Yeah. And then so if we, and that's one, say, a layer of analysis. And I think there's another that I think may be equally true or also true at the same time. So if we follow that line, if we were to in a way make it a one-to-one and a correlation of you sorting through your own beliefs to get to a place, you know, the more you refine a single idea, the more it becomes under attack from competing urges and desires within you. So this could be,

as I was saying, other aspects of yourself that are like maybe not happy with you following that because it means they disappear. You've got to give up one thing to attain another. And it's very interesting that at the very end of it, the more and more and more you came under attack, that suddenly all the opposing forces gang up and throw one big massive attacking. Like, in order to survive this,

I have to fully become that idea of the surrender and lose my corporeal form into this, split into a million pieces that the balls pass right through. They can't touch me. Actually, the solution to winning is, is the idea itself, which is emerging victorious through that,

through it fully embracing itself. I don't if that makes sense on that. Yeah, it does, you know, my perception of it has been that, you know, the more that I can surrender

this perception of autonomy, as we talked about before, uh, then the less subject to these, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for sure you know affect me

and that ultimately has been my interpretation and the message of the dream the more that you surrender that compilation of false beliefs and the more open to reality

for lack of better description the the more successful that I will be in my goal. For sure. Yeah. So that's one layer. And, you know, another occurred to me as we're talking it out, which is that's how this word. I don't know where any of this comes from.

I literally, I just put a funnel in my head and open it up and say, give me, give me something. Make me, make me useful. I see that. It's a little. Exactly. I even have, if you look in the background there, I've got a little lamp on my, by my bedside, Bing, light. That was completely accident.

I didn't do that on purpose. That just happened to be how this all got set up. But it like, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for this little gap in between the light. This is give me, give me, give me the idea.

So bring that down here. So the other idea that occurred to me was what if it is, so it works on one level. It works on that idea of what if these are elements of yourself coming to an understanding and winnowing out and fully embracing an idea. But I think it also works on the idea of you are in a world with other people. they have their own spiritual energies and they're going to throw them at you in a way of like, here, believe what I say, you know, do things my way, allow my ego self to dominate how you

behave or influence your understanding. And in the beginning, as we, you know, we're younger and we approach philosophy and the search for truth and all this. It feels like a big game. It feels like I'm going to know stuff and I'm going to be important and I'm going to, you know, All this, we don't understand the seriousness of it, but as it goes along, you realize these are, it's not a game. It's not a, it's not just silly fun time to, to tag out other, to defeat other bad ideas, to,

to have your understanding prevail at the end of it. And so, so there's, there's also the element of, of the flight. I mean, it all starts very, and that's another level, too. It's like a very physical representation of you're stuck in at one level of understanding and ability until you transcend to the point. You know, you're on a 2D plane. We're running around playing tag. And then suddenly something fundamentally different. Now you can move in three dimensions.

Something has opened up in you where there's a new ability for under. And we've got to get to a certain point in our study of the world, ourselves, great ideas that have come before where things start to click and we go, whoa. I now I understand something I never knew before and that's where you get the vertical element in my estimation is it's three dimensional yeah it becomes so much more than what I at first I thought I could see and then I didn't then I realized how blind I was um so yeah and then the game gets real then the game becomes more earnest then then you're now you're playing with big boys in a way now now you're subject to attack in in a more threatening way that isn't just a game of words it's this is a game of souls and the game of thrones in that way of like whose whose ideas are going to be ultimately um you know authoritative in a way what's whose truth will prevail in a sense even if it is or fulfilling what's that or fulfilling yeah yeah absolutely too so it's uh and and this this may have been a moment in your life too where

you're realizing if i follow this path that i'm on i'm going to come under fire and And I'm going to be attacked by forces external to myself that each have their own motivations. But they're trying to have their ideas be the one that everyone believes. And if I make myself enough of a target, if I'm good enough at this game, then it's going to get real. And I'm going to, at some point, I'll be under such attack that the only escape will be to become the embodiment or lack of embodiment of the idea I'm trying to show that the secret to winning is what I'm, is the very idea that forms the basis of my, the reason I want to win. I'm going to stop there.

That's now mangling my words. Any thoughts on all that? What happened? What, I ceased playing the game not by quitting the game or just I was transcending the game. Yeah. Yeah. Transcendence is a good way. It's like your ball of spiritual energy personal to you would be, if we're conceptualizing it, is this, these are your ideas, your truth. The one the one you're trying to communicate to other people, the one you want to prevail,

is this idea of of embracing the illusion of the world. In letting go of the material form as something paramount. It's subsuming the physical to the idea itself. So you've got all these other ideas or spiritual energies coming at you in a big mass and they're going to hit. The only way to win is to become that embodiment of that no form.

And you show yourself a representation of transcending the form. Yeah, yeah. is that what you were describing earlier, like kind of your understanding of what the stream was saying to you in the first place? Yeah. Okay. Uh,

nice. Um, where was I going with this here? Well, I think we went through it all. But what I wanted to ask you was, so you said this was 20 years ago, what was going on in your life at the time?

I mean, how do we connect it to what you were going through, where you were at in your journey? It was beginning this process of awakening. where let's see how do we describe if it's okay to say uh you know were you finishing a particular um way of living in the world uh you know moving to a new place changing jobs completing an education in a certain way what was what was transitioning your life that opened that door in well about this time is when i had my awakening and i realized that all this stuff that i'd been doing

before wasn't working, wasn't making me happy, and so I had a lot of changes that were taking place in my life. And, you know, everything from family to work to everything. I mean, it was just a total transition and focusing on what has become my mission of my mission of providing the information, and much of which we talked about earlier in our conversation. And so that was kind of the beginning. Would you say the, how am I trying to phrase this? Like, did the dream come like before, during, or after, do you think? Like, was it the culmination of understanding where you were and then getting it crystallized?

Or was it kind of an early representation that sent you down this path a little bit? It gave you a little more certainty or at least the inkling. There's more of a foretelling. A bit ahead of time. That's, I love that kind of stuff too. And I think that's the true value of understanding dreams is, is if you know where you're at in your process. And you can get that understanding from paying attention to your dreams and let you know where to go in some ways. And not in a controlling, not in a controlling, you must obey type of type of way.

But yet, like a foretelling. Like you were saying. The guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's like, here's where you're at. Here's the problem you're facing. Here's what you think it might be a likely solution. Now you can make a decision.

Now you understand. Now you've conceptualized it properly. Got it, got a grip on it. So you woke up from this dream in the middle of the night and wrote it out, wrote it out. And then how did you reflect on it going forward? How did you make use of it? Very positively. And it obviously has stayed as a fond recollection.

my memory and it pops into my mind frequently. Nice. I think it's, uh, it's, it's, I think of dreams as much as their psychological, physical experiences. I think of them as, as as magical experiences as well, like, uh, sometimes dreams come to you to point the way, but also to give you comfort in the knowledge that this way is the way. Uh, and, and I, there's a, I didn't invent this phrase. I stole it from somebody or it's anonymous. I know who said it first, but follow your dreams. They know the way. And again, I wasn't saying that or I don't say it in a in a compulsory manner, but like they're going to show you opportunities, possibilities at the very least. And then you get to choose. Becoming aware allows

choice in that regard. So, you know, they know the way. They're not telling you you got to follow the way, but they're going to show you ways if you pay attention. So it's nice to have these experiences that come to you and say, uh, here's what you think or believe or feel. Here's, here's what appears to be the truth. Now you can take comfort in following that path and saying,

you know, that's, I had, I had the feeling that was the right thing to do. And now I understand why a lot better. Um, I don't think that that's kind of also your conception. Yeah,

it is. I mean, you can continue to sit on the tack and let it hurt and just get used to it or you can lean forward a little bit and remove the tack yeah exactly stop stop banging your head on that on that brick wall huh um you know the only thing i did not address and there's always so many different elements i can never get them all quite um but the idea that it was at night uh iconically you know in a dream dictionary ish day and night can be broadly is, you know, daylight, enlightenment, night, obscurity, hidden, shadow, darkness.

I mean, a lot of these human ways we conceptualize those things. But it's also the difference between the chaos of change and the dawning of a new order in a way. And we say dawning. Now the sun is up. It is a new day. The old day has ended. And that brings me to, you know, like Egyptian mythology. They had the, the Ogdawad.

And one of them was Keck, the frog god. of chaos and night, which the kids on 4chan, they love, you know, the Keck Chaos God. But then there's his, his feminine counterpart is Hecquette, the goddess of the dawn, the establishment of new order. So a lot of dreams that take place at night are transitional periods of like, here's the place to discover a new thing, the new way, to embrace a change. So I don't know if that resonates with you in terms of why it was set at night or if some other meaning had already kind of set itself in your mind over time.

With the darkness, it wasn't, you know, pitch black, dark. It was nighttime, obviously, but there was ambient light, and I don't really know where the ambient light came from other than possibly the, you know, the balls of energy that we were holding. But there was that, you know, like city light, there was just ambient light that you can see around. and I and I took that to be more of the the darkness of the innocence

of the lack of knowing of the environment that we're in. Well, sure. That's another good reason. Yeah, yeah. This is why I don't go strictly on my own inspiration or on dream dictionary stuff is because that's a great way to conceptualize it too is like innocence.

The fool being a precursor to the Savior thing we were talking about earlier of like, You know, you don't have to see everything clearly. It's okay to not understand or it's not, it's okay to not see everything clearly at first. This is, that's the process of discoveries going in blind, going in to a dark room and then feeling your way out, uh, slowly shedding light on, on what is there. That's why we use those metaphors, uh, you know, uh, anyway, that's, that was my thought too. I just wanted to touch on that.

Were there any other elements that you thought we, didn't discuss that that might be fascinating to get an alternative opinion on or you think we covered things pretty well? I think we covered it. Nothing else comes to mind. Nothing else, you know, is remarkable in my memory about to dream other than what we've talked about. Fair enough.

Good deal. I just like to give people that one last opportunity to say, hey, no, wait, Ben, what about this? What do you think about that? That's how things go four and a half hours sometimes. Like any other questions? Yes. Okay, well, if it's good with you, we'll wrap it up in the show and say her goodbyes.

Very good. Thank you. I'm delighted to be part of your show. I've enjoyed it tremendously. Very much. Okay. Well, then the last thing to do is all the shilling, of course. I'm going to say once again, this has been our guest dreamer, Dean Graves from Memphis, Tennessee. He is a mental health counselor, podcaster, spiritual messenger, and author of four books, including his most recent, The Enigma of Consciousness, A Spiritual exploration of, humanity's relationship to creation. You can find him at D.deengraves.org, and that link will be in the description below.

For my part, would you kindly, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the video game streams, Monday through Friday, 5 to 8 p.m. Pacific. I have 17 currently available works of historical dream literature book two in the series, the mystery of dreams, a, well, it's right there. Have a look at it.

We're going to move on. Also, if you had head on over to Benjamin the dream wizard. Dot locals.com building your community there. It's attached to my Rumble account. Free to join. You can give me money or not. That's up to you.

Doesn't bother me a bit. But it's a great place to reach out to me if you would like to be a guest. And last thing to say is Dean, thank you for making the time to talk with me today. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's been tremendous experience.

I'm very grateful. Thank you. I'm grateful you showed up. And to everybody out there, thank you for listening.